Bloodstained: Ritual of the Night New York Comic Con 2017 Preview

On May 11th, 2015 the Kickstarter campaign for Koji Igarashi's Bloodstained: Ritual of the Night started and reached 1 million in donations by the first day and ended with $5.5 million from backers. While the game is set for a 2018 release I was able to play a demo at this year's New York Comic Con. After completing it I can say it's everything that was promised.

Bloodstained follows an orphan named Miriam. After being afflicted by an alchemist's curse, which is turning her skin into crystal, she heads into a demon-filled castle to locate its summoner who suffered from a similar curse. This is her only means of survival, find the summoner and defeat the horde of monsters that stand in her way.

Bloodstain’s demo opens with a standard introduction to the gameplay mechanics, this includes the 2.5D style environment and basic equipment tutorial. Players can equip varying types of equipment such as armor and weapons. Weapons vary greatly based on their type such as one-handed weapons dishing out quick hits but lack the damage and two-handed weapons dealing heavy destruction but at a cost of speed. During the demo, I was able to wield an assortment of knives, swords, claymores, and daggers that each dealt varying DPS. The only real issue I had was with the slide, which felt way too short in distance to be effective. 

Most of the enemy types were genetic cannon-fodder but given this is just the start the enemies served their purpose. Large Knights and smaller deformed zombie-like creatures littered the environment and were beautifully animated. While they didn't serve many challenges they offered ample opportunity to test out Miriam's skills. 

Bloodstained plays a lot like Castlevania: Symphony of the Night, giving the player access to new abilities as they level up. However, in Bloodstained Miriam must gain new powers by enabling crystals within her body which grant her new powers such as double-jumping and summoning familiars. The demo didn't provide any real challenge and the boss was simply enough that spanning a powerful spell yielded success. However, during my time with the demo, I was left wanting more. 

Bloodstained: Ritual of the Night is turning out to be exactly what was promised from the Kickstarter campaign. The Metroidvania-style gameplay of exploring a massive map separated into chunks and defeating enemies within a 2D system is still addicting. With chests scattered throughout the field, I could've helped myself from collecting everything and seeing what contents they had. If you love Metroidvania games or Castlevania you should keep an eye on Bloodstained

Bloodstained: Ritual of the Night is set to release in 2018 for Xbox One, PS4, PS Vita, Mac, Linux, Nintendo Switch, and PC. 

Adam Siddiqui, NoobFeed
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